Say that some things compose something, if the latter is a whole, fusion, or mereological sum of the former. Then the thesis that composition is identity holds that the composition… Click to show full abstract
Say that some things compose something, if the latter is a whole, fusion, or mereological sum of the former. Then the thesis that composition is identity holds that the composition relation is a kind of identity relation, a plural cousin of singular identity. On this thesis, any things that compose a whole (taken together) are identical with the whole. This article argues that the thesis is incoherent. To do so, the article formulates the thesis in a plural language, a symbolic language that includes counterparts of plural constructions of natural languages, and shows that it implies that nothing has a proper part. Then the article argues that the thesis, as its proponents take it, is incoherent because they take it to imply or presuppose that some things have proper parts.
               
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